Apple's CRM Strategy: Customer Acquisition, Technology, and Retention

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Apple Smartphone's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation. It examines Apple's governance, culture, and external relationships, highlighting the company's dedication to customer loyalty and strategic partnerships with firms like Salesforce and IBM. The analysis covers Apple's marketing and communication strategies, people management through 'Apple U,' and the use of 'Design Thinking' for innovation. It explores the company's channel strategies, including online stores, direct sales, and third-party retailers, emphasizing Apple's diversified approach to customer accessibility. Furthermore, the report delves into Apple's technology usage to enhance its CRM capabilities, focusing on data analytics and real-time data retrieval. The report concludes with recommendations, aiming to provide insights into Apple's CRM strategy and its impact on overall performance. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and resources for students.

Running head: CRM ANALYSIS
Customer Relationship Management Analysis
[Apple Smartphone]
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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1CRM ANALYSIS
1) Executive summary
The study discusses and analyses the customer relationship management (CRM) at Apple
Smartphone Company. The findings of the study suggest that Apple is a rare company, which
effectively understand its customers and their perception of the brand. Apple also understands
what their customers expect from the company. Hence, there is no stoppage to innovation at
Apple. Apple enhances its innovating and CRM capability by collaborating with strategic
partners. Some of its strategic partners are Salesforce and IBM.

2CRM ANALYSIS
Table of Contents
1) Executive summary.....................................................................................................................1
2) Introduction.................................................................................................................................3
3) Analysis.......................................................................................................................................3
3.1) Governance, culture, external relationship...........................................................................3
3.2) Channel strategies.................................................................................................................6
3.3) Technology...........................................................................................................................7
4) Recommendations/ Conclusions.................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

3CRM ANALYSIS
2) Introduction
Customer relationship management (CRM) is in existence for quite a long while;
however, it has now taken a different shape. One factor that has influenced the way customer
relationship is managed is increasing usage of CRM software by leading global companies. This
study is also on a global company and describing its capability in CRM application. That global
company is a California, the United States-based Apple Smartphone. The company is widely
recognised as one of the leading smartphone makers in the world in terms of both revenues and
product quality (Apple.com 2019). This study does not discuss the general business performance
of Apple. Instead, it discusses how effectively Apple makes use of CRM to produce an impact
with it. Moreover, there will be recommendations given to the company provided it really needs
that.
3) Analysis
This section of the study will analyse the implementing capability of the Apple
Smartphone in the context of the CRM. The analysis will be built upon three basic elements such
as governance, culture and external relationship. This means how Apple has been governing the
CRM application until now. Moreover, the analysis will identify both the favourable and
unfavourable cultural factors (if any) in the Apple Smartphone. The external relationship
whether or not Apple was able to identify and collaborate with strategic partners to effectively
manage CRM. The channel strategies that were being followed by the company to attain
efficiency in CRM operations and enhance their product and service offering the capability. The
pieces of technology that were being used to attain expertise in CRM application.
3.1) Governance, culture, external relationship
Governance:
Apple unlike its arch-rival company Samsung is very dedicated to improving its
excellence in establishing an effective and long-lasting relationship with customers. Customer
loyalty to Apple is worth noting (Khan, Alam and Alam 2015). It is to be noted that what makes
Apple create and maintain such high customer loyalty. There are various features that make such
things to happen. These are sheer governance of marketing and communication strategies, people
management and development of innovation solution.

4CRM ANALYSIS
Marketing and communication strategy at Apple is pretty different from Samsung. Apple
invests $333 million in advertising through billboards, print, online and television (Forbes.com
2019). However, the way it makes pieces of information publically available is quite remarkable.
It does not emphasise too much on the features of the product. Rather, it uses simple terms like
the retina display to describe the unique features of the product (Forbes.com 2019). This is where
they create a deep bonding with their target customers.
People management at Apple is quite strategic. The company uses “Apple U” to keep its
employees placing to different parts of the world. It provides an opportunity to work with diverse
cultures and therefore, develop an awareness and feasibility with diverse cultures. It does not just
influence the employees’ customer handling capability but also provide input on the consumer
behaviour for the company. In addition, freshly recruited professionals are sent to Apple
University where they learn how Apple governs its range of activities (Businessinsider.in 2019).
The way Apple manages its people helps the company understand its customers in a more
effective manner.
Development of innovation solution is governed in the company with “Design Thinking”.
Design thinking is about keeping the customer in vision throughout the innovation development
process. Innovation solutions that have high business viability and are also feasible with the
technological capability of the company are only selected.
Culture:
According to Elsmore (2017), organisational culture is one of the key driving factors for
innovation solution. Apple uses various strategies to ensure that the organisational culture is
mostly positive and supportive of innovation. Firstly, Apple recruits only those who possess
excellent working skills. Excellence in skills drives Apple to innovation solutions. Secondly,
employees are encouraged to bring in new and creative ideas. The best-selected idea is
appreciated, so that, employees feel good about it. Thirdly, Apple drives its employees towards
rapid innovation. Rapid innovation helps Apple introduce new products that appeal to its
customers' demands. Fourthly, secrecy is one of the key factors of Apple’s organisational
culture. With this cultural trait, they keep things secret until the time the product is launched.
Finally, Apple keeps its employees guessing by exploring them to new challenges

5CRM ANALYSIS
(Annualreports.com 2019). The company does it to ensure developing job-based competency in
its employees.
As stated above, organisational culture at Apple helps the company build up a long-term
relationship with its customers through its strategic usage of customer relationship management.
Apple stores unlike any other stores are not just sales-centric but also tend to empower
consumers. They follow ‘do not just sale’ concept to educate consumers on the products.
Consumers are allowed to touch and experience the product that they want. This allows
consumers to know the brilliance and excellence of the product (Annualreports.com 2019). It
makes their customers more loyal to the company as they are encouraged to make an informed
purchase. By doing this Apple is also becoming more creative by involving their consumers in
the innovation developing process. Consumers are allowed to ask as many questions as they
want to. They have people serving their needs at the different Apple’s stores. Apple ensures that
people come to buy and are just the customers; however, they return home after learning a bit
about their chosen product.
By allowing customers to engage in a dialogue regarding a product does not just
influence customer loyalty for the company but also help to attain their customers' insights on the
product. Customers’ insights include many such as suggestions for a product related
improvement.
Apple has its own retail stores. It helps the company to personally interact with their
customers (Montag 2016). Moreover, they get to know what their customers perceive Apple as a
brand and what they expect to form their chosen brand. Hence, Apple gets to know what exactly
their customers need. The pieces of information thus obtained expand Apple’s capability in
forecasting the market demands.
External Relationship:
Customer relationship is not just managed from internally but it also requires some
external assistance. Apple is not just good with its governance and culture but also knows how to
expand its capability by collaborating to strategic partners. One of the remarkable achievements
in this regard is a recent collaboration with Salesforce, the number one CRM platform
(Theverge.com 2019). The biggest impact of this collaboration will be a redesigned and native

6CRM ANALYSIS
Salesforce app to be used along the iOS. Moreover, with this collaboration, Apple intends to
move to the next level of innovation with features such as Siri. Siri will allow instant access to
different things with just a voice instead of a click (Theverge.com 2019).
A collaboration with Salesforce just explains that Apple knows how to govern the
development of an innovation solution. They are not just able to devise creative ideas but also
know how to get these ideas implemented into the system. Apple was intending for a long while
to offer innovation solution to make iPhones more user-friendly. For this to happen they had the
plans; however, they did not have the resources to get their needs served from. Finally, they
could identify their needs getting fulfilled in the form of Salesforce. The collaboration between
Apple and Salesforce also shows how Apple governs the external relationship with its strategic
partners.
This was not just the only move Apple adopted to enhance its CRM capabilities. Apple
also has a collaboration partnership with IBM. Apple went for this collaboration to access its
excellence in big data and analytics capabilities. Moreover, the intent was to enhance their data
analytic capability and thereby, gaining the ability to utilise the large-scale data of consumers in
real-time (Gandomi and Haider 2015). Accessing to large scale data is not only sufficient till the
moment there is no system to use these pieces of data in real-time. Erevelles, Fukawa and
Swayne (2016) opine that many companies generally lack skills needed to retrieve the data in
real-time. Therefore, strategic analytics capability is a must-have thing to accurately understand
the data behaviour and to obtain the right set of data in real-time. Apple with an intent to further
its capability in customer relationship management was more than able to identify a strategic
external partner in the form of IBM.
3.2) Channel strategies
This means how and what process does Apple follow to make its products available to its
end-users. This also means how capably Apple uses various channel strategies to enhance their
CRM capability.
The distribution network of Apple is much diversified. The diversification is also quite
prominent in its channel strategies. The diversified network has been helpful in attaining
sustained growth over the years. On looking to the distribution network of Apple it appears that

7CRM ANALYSIS
the company has appropriate strategies in place. The distribution channel can broadly be divided
into four categories. These are the online store, direct sales, online store, and third-party dealers
and retailers (Nieto-Rodriguez 2016). These distribution channels contribute to the customer
relationship management of Apple. Apple stores are more than just any store. In stores, customer
relationship management is given a deep concern. Every single consumer that turns up to stores
is given adequate opportunity to learn about their chosen product. They get to learn something
till the moment they return to their homes. Such a close observation does not just reveal Apple’s
transparency to their commitment but also influences customer loyalty for the company.
The list of retailers also includes telecom service providers from across the globe. In
India for an example, Apple sells iPhones through strategic partners such as various telecom
service providers. The list of telecom service providers includes Airtel, Vodafone and Jio. It is
worth mentioning that these telecom service providers are the three most reputed telecom
companies in India (Apple.com 2019). It shows Apple's cautious approach to strategic
collaboration. They tend to stay far away from unreliable business partners. Rather, they join
hands with those who are highly reliable and holds high market reputation. This is how Apple
makes a difference to its customer loyalty. This is also how Apple easily reaches to its target
market.
Apple’s strategic approach for reaching to their customers as stated earlier is quite
diversified. An increasingly growing cashless system required Apple to respond to it (Basu
2018). Apple responded to it realising an urgency to meet the growing demand for online
purchase among the younger population (Shinde 2017). Apple made collaboration with various
online and mobile-based platforms. Most popular online business partners of Apple are
Amazon.com, eBay, Flipkart, Airtel and others (Riquelme, Román and Iacobucci 2016). Apple
uses these online partners to sell iPhones. Moreover, they provide various payment options to
their consumers like Paytm (Riquelme, Román and Iacobucci 2016). This is how Apple uses
diversified online and mobile-based platforms to fulfill their customers’ demands.
Based on the information as above, it can be said that Apple uses every possible way to
be accessible for its customers. The company ensures that its customers face no challenge in
buying iPhones from various channels. It is not the case that they are limited just till physical
outlets for selling iPhones. Rather, they are highly diversified and are available for their

8CRM ANALYSIS
customers on more or less over every existing platform. However, they currently have a very
limited number of physical stores at a worldwide level (Apple.com 2019). Although, customers
have little or no complaints regarding the issue Apple can still work in the highlighted area. This
will allow more people turning to stores. Hence, customer loyalty level will also get better.
3.3) Technology
Technology holds greater significance in relation to strengthening customer relationship
management capability. Arguably, Apple holds a reputation of being a company that knows
whom to work with to deliver the most reliable service. They kept experimenting with
technologies for unlocking enhanced consumers’ insights and to offer more relevant service to
their customers. One of these experiments was working with IBM to further Apple’s data
analytics capability (Apple.com 2019). There are very few companies who exactly know how to
retrieve data in real-time. Apple was able to overcome the barrier by collaborating with IBM, an
expert in a data analytics solution. This collaboration will help Apple to further its capability in
data analytics. Moreover, they should have better customers' insights, which means relevancy-
level of their products will also increase.
More recently Apple collaborated with Salesforce, the world’s leading CRM platform
(Apple.com 2019). Expectedly, Apple will move to the next level in customer relationship
management with this collaboration. Apple could be able to offer many technological features
including “Siri” as well. “Siri” is a voice-based command feature that will allow accessing to an
app and much more in iOS with just a voice command (Apple.com 2019). This will considerably
reduce the time being consumed in opening an app. Moreover, customer loyalty will also
improve as customers will feel valued with this innovation from Apple. Customers will feel like
being cared for by the company.
4) Recommendations/ Conclusions
To conclude, it can be said that Apple is well aware of the significance to access to more
customers' insights. They know it well that increased customers' insights are necessary to further
the innovating capability. It is also needed to offer more relevant products. The study finds
Apple as a company that knows how to overcome barriers those that generally prevent gaining
access to customers’ insights. Apple effectively manages customer relationship with effective

9CRM ANALYSIS
governance of organisational culture, strategic collaborations, channel strategies and technology.
However, the company should introduce more new stores to be more accessible to consumers.
On a recommending note, it can be said that Apple should increase its number of
physical stores. If this could happen the company will be satisfying one of its customers' concern
with the company.
References
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[Accessed 28 May 2019].
Apple.com 2019. Apple. [online] Apple. Available at: https://www.apple.com/ [Accessed 28
May 2019].
Basu, A., 2018. The inclusion factors towards a cashless economy. Available at SSRN 3261874.
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culture-into-new-employees/articleshow/46626002.cms [Accessed 28 May 2019].
Elsmore, P., 2017. Organisational Culture: Organisational Change?: Organisational Change?.
Routledge.
Erevelles, S., Fukawa, N. and Swayne, L., 2016. Big Data consumer analytics and the
transformation of marketing. Journal of Business Research, 69(2), pp.897-904.
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2019].
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analytics. International journal of information management, 35(2), pp.137-144.

10CRM ANALYSIS
Khan, U.A., Alam, M.N. and Alam, S., 2015. A critical analysis of internal and external
environment of Apple Inc. International Journal of Economics, Commerce and
Management, 3(6), pp.955-961.
Montag, A., 2016. Why Business Journalists Love Apple Inc.
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can dramatically improve strategy execution. Routledge.
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trailhead [Accessed 28 May 2019].